Four Months of Grief
by DaughterOfSorceress-Lion
Summary: The four empty months in New Moon that drove every reader mad, filled in a bit. We lost a lot of Bella in those four months, this just helps explain her differences in New Moon from Twilight... I hope it does anyway.


AN: I don't quite know how to voice this complaint, but I guess Bella in New Moon after Edward left, seemed to loose what made her soooo…. Bella. I know she was in a hell of a lot of pain, and I know the difference is what brought about the whole two different Bella's that she was trying to merge, but both had, or should have had the same basic characteristics. Without Edward there, she seemed to loose that, she really did loose who she was.

When Stephenie Meyer skipped over those four months that drove every reader mad, I think we lost something on Bella's transformation… what got her to where she was going to be, so this is just a little insert that made me feel a little bit better. Hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: New Moon and all affiliated characters are the property of Stephenie Meyer. I do not wish to infringe upon that claim, merely use her work as a base to create my own.

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**Four Months of Grief**

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_September_

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Denial:

I was catatonic for a week.

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Anger:

My mother came to get me, I destroyed half of my bedroom when I realized she wanted to take me from my home.

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Bargaining:

It wasn't so much bargaining as it was refusal to comply, I was eighteen. I could do whatever the hell I wanted.

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Depression:

I had always been good at repressing bad memories. But staying in forks, the gloom of the grey sky were constant reminders… the sun shining on the morning dew was as well. I couldn't hide from it here. If I had gone to Jacksonville… the memories would not fade, but they would be locked tightly in a box that would never be opened, leaving only a meaningless hole in my chest to deal with the rest of my life.

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_October_

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Depression:

The hole never went away, it broke through my walls when I slept leaving Charlie to hear my screams of abandonment in the middle of the night. I faded from existence outside of my own small reality, looking from the outside in, to the life I once participated in. My grades were excellent, I worked at Newton's, and did my job as a sales girl well, as long as I didn't look the customer in the eye. If I did, they would shrink away in instinctual pity, seeing the lifeless survivor in front of them. I didn't look anyone in the eye if I could help it.

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_November_

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Depression:

Charlie didn't bother to check on me when I screamed at night anymore. I didn't blame him one bit. The only thing I wish was that he didn't have to put up with me. I still made dinner, we still talked, but he looked worn. He went to work early, and he came home late, taking care of the family he knew how to take care of. He didn't go out with Billy to fish, though they, being Billy and Jacob, came over to watch a game or two. I would hide in my room, Jacob would always say hi to me. His smile would light the world around be for a brief moment, and then he would leave and everything would once again fade to black.

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_December_

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Acceptance:

I accepted that my chest would always feel mangled. I accepted that I would never find happiness again. I accepted that I was only surviving, and not living. I accepted that Charlie was disappointed and confused by my behavior. I accepted that I would never be able to move on. I accepted why.

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_January_

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Why would I never be able to move on? I wasn't even in denial about their disappearance. Their existence was slowly being suppressed, their names had faded, they did not haunt my nightmares, nor did I think of their faces. I ignored the fact that they had ever existed in my life. I ignored the fact that they had abandoned me like a family abandons a puppy when it grows up and the novelty and the cuteness wear off.

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The fact that all of this was being suppressed led me to understand that I was not going through the grieving process of loosing them… but I was grieving through the loss of myself. The self I would not be able to find. That required thinking, required talking, and making peace. I could not do this with others as talking did no good without truth, and if I told the truth, I would be seeing white padded walls for the rest of my life. Most of all I could not make peace with myself, because that would require opening the box I had stuffed them into. I couldn't do that, not without provoking the pain.

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The pain was the only thing I couldn't ignore. Whenever my thoughts even came close to even touching their box, the pain would rip through me distracting me. It felt like I was dying, like my heart was missing, like my lungs were missing, like I couldn't breath. When the pain invaded my chest I curled up trying to hold myself together when it did. But even when it didn't spike, it was always there. I felt like a soulless being, a ghost making my way through life unnoticed by anyone else, lost without a guide.

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This was me… It's not who I am, but it is what I've become. There is no denying that, no arguing it, no place to bargain, no place to hold my depression above the happiness of my parents… the cold hard truth was that I was surviving, waiting for death because I could not, for the sake of my parents and a suppressed but never forgotten promise, search death out myself.

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All the while the back of my brain was screaming at me, shouting at me, but I couldn't hear it. The voice of reason had been suppressed along with my memories. Who I was, who I am, was suppressed.

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The body of Bella Swan was nothing more than a shell. I knew this, but I was waiting, as always. Waiting for them to never come back, or maybe I was just waiting for myself to emerge and take control of this lifeless existence I was leading, or maybe I really was just waiting for death. But either way, I was waiting… and waiting… and waiting… and waiting.

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Nothing came.

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Nothing was going to come.

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My human existence would always be spent waiting… and only one question remained?

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Why bother?

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And the screaming in the back of my head would start again, but I couldn't hear it. There was nothing to hear, there was no listening to reason, there was no reason to wait, there was nothing, I was nothing, and as healthy as it would be to hate him… as much as that would start the grieving process, regardless of whether I could finish it or not, I could never hate him. He had become my everything and I had sunk into a security of knowing that I would love, and would be loved in return forever, and that blanket had been ripped up from under me leaving me in a six foot hole bleeding and cold and, indeed, waiting for death.

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AN: So there ya go, review if ya liked it, and if ya didn't… tell me why?


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